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PIPELINES: Residents who live along the Mountain Valley Pipeline complain that Virginia regulators are ignoring erosion and pollution complaints as construction nears completion. (WVTF)
ALSO: The Mountain Valley Pipeline’s biggest stakeholder announces it will merge with its former owner, Pittsburgh gas company EQT, in a $5.5 billion stock deal. (Cardinal News; Bloomberg, subscription)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
SOLAR:
OIL & GAS:
COAL:
UTILITIES: The prosecution rests and defense begins its case in the trial of two former executives who are accused of scheming to collect bonuses by privatizing Jacksonville, Florida’s municipal utility. (WTLV)
CLIMATE:
Correction: Connecticut’s Innovative Energy Solutions Program is working with the consulting firm Strategen. An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of the program and firm. Also, the participating company Kraken is not affiliated with the similarly named cryptocurrency company.
Connecticut regulators have approved the first round of pilot projects in a new program aimed at accelerating innovation across the electric grid.
Seven tech companies have received the go-ahead to partner with utilities Eversource or United Illuminating to test the potential of their hardware or software to help decarbonize the state’s electric grid.
The Innovative Energy Solutions Program is part of a broader effort by the state Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) to modernize the grid. It encourages utilities to embrace new technology while limiting the risk to ratepayers.
The selected companies were winnowed from an initial 50 applications. While some of the technologies have been deployed successfully elsewhere, none have been tested in Connecticut, said Julia Dumaine, PURA’s supervisor of strategy and operations. The projects, funded at a total of just under $10 million, were chosen after a multi-step review process that included scrutiny from a nine-member advisory council.
“Having these increasingly stringent reviews minimizes ratepayer risk,” Dumaine said. “These are technologies that have demonstrated the potential to provide real ratepayer and grid-level benefits.”
None are startups in the research and development phase — they are all prepared to scale up at a later date, she said.
After the pilots launch, each company has a set of metrics they must meet and will be required to report on them quarterly, said Eli Asher, a senior manager at Strategen, the consulting firm responsible for developing and administering the program.
“We will be gathering data on how effective the projects are,” he said. “At the end of the deployment period, we’ll have a cost-benefit analysis to inform the recommendations as to whether they should be fully deployed at scale across the state.”
The program allows the utilities to recover their costs for testing these new technologies, something they might be reluctant to do otherwise.
“I think it’s great to have regulators backing a program like this,” said Alex Ghanem, commercial manager for Piclo, one of the companies participating. “It’s a risk to test things out and it costs the utilities resources to do so. I think this is a great framework.”
Based in London, England, Piclo will work with United Illuminating to launch a grid flexibility market. They will recruit owners, operators and managers of any type of distributed energy resource — battery storage, electric vehicles, and other types of dispatchable power sources commonly known as DERs — to operate in an independent marketplace in return for compensation.
Piclo will work with DER aggregators on their platform. They will provide United Illuminating with local flexible DERs that represent alternative — and ideally, cheaper — places to buy energy than on the wholesale market when the utility has insufficient supply to meet customer demand.
Piclo is already operating in New York in partnership with National Grid.
“The penetration of DERs is disrupting the grid and the utilities need to pull on multiple different levers to manage that,” said John Bayard, Piclo’s chief commercial officer. “Grid flexibility marketplaces are one of the tools they can use.”
Another British company, Kraken, will also work with United Illuminating to help them better manage DERs.
Kraken’s platform “can connect to any kind of DER — electric vehicles, heat pumps, smart thermostats,” said Devrim Celal, chief executive officer. “We can connect to them in an effective way, monitor them in real time and control what they do.”
This pilot will focus on customers that use heat pumps and drive electric vehicles. The company will recruit ratepayers to sign up to use their mobile app, which will give Kraken access to their DERs. For example, they might tell the company what kind of EV and charger they have, and what time of day they need to have their car charged by.
“We will determine when is the best time to charge their cars to achieve low-carbon emission targets, and in exchange we’ll give them a reward,” Celal said.
The pilot is intended to help the grid run greener and more cheaply.
An EV charging software company called AmpUp will work with Eversource to try to balance electricity demand during peak periods by decreasing load at electric vehicle chargers. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., AmpUp will provide incentives to compensate charging station owners for decreasing charging during peak periods.
They are still working out what level of incentive might stimulate participation, as well as whether it might appeal to a workplace with four chargers as much as to a company operating a fleet of vehicles, said Matt Bloom, director of partnerships.
“We’re really excited,” he said. “It’s good to see the regulators take a little risk. This is a good way to innovate, see what we learn and whether it’s something Eversource could adopt long term.”
CLIMATE: The continental U.S. experienced its warmest winter on record, during which average temperatures throughout the Midwest and Northeast exceeded past averages by as much as 10°F. (Axios)
ALSO:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
GRID: Four Congress members push the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to institute an incentive that would encourage the use of new technologies to increase capacity on existing and new transmission lines. (Utility Dive)
ELECTRIFICATION: A recent study shows electric heat pumps reduce emissions compared to other heating systems, even when they run on fossil-fueled grid power. (Canary Media)
CLEAN ENERGY:
CARBON CAPTURE: The developer of a multi-state carbon pipeline says it remains open to contracts that offtake the carbon for enhanced oil recovery, despite sworn testimony that the project is for underground storage. (Reuters)
OIL & GAS:
UTILITIES: Clean energy advocates applaud Minnesota’s largest gas utility for drafting a $105 million decarbonization plan, but say it doesn’t move fast enough to meet state emission-reduction targets. (Energy News Network)
SOLAR: To get around New Hampshire’s 5 MW solar net metering cap, the town of Bow plans to develop 6 MW of capacity across three municipal sites — double the capacity of the largest array in the state. (Concord Monitor)
ALSO:
OFFSHORE WIND: The head of the Connecticut Port Authority says New York’s selection of the Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind projects promises more turbine assembly activity at the New London state pier. (The Day)
GRID:
CONSUMERS: Maryland lawmakers advance new residential ratepayer protections for those purchasing power from retail suppliers, including a price cap over the standard service offer. (Associated Press)
HYDROPOWER: Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, considers whether to remove or restore a former hydroelectric dam that provides an attractive backdrop for daily life but is structurally unsound. (Bangor Daily News)
CLIMATE:
COMMENTARY: New Hampshire’s consumer advocate writes that Eversource Energy is undertaking a $400 million transmission line upgrade project in a way that indicates the utility is “hoping nobody, or almost nobody, will notice.” (In-Depth NH)
UTILITIES: Clean energy advocates applaud Minnesota’s largest gas utility for drafting a $105 million decarbonization plan, but say it doesn’t move fast enough to meet state emission-reduction targets. (Energy News Network)
POLITICS:
PIPELINES:
CARBON CAPTURE: The developer of a multi-state carbon pipeline says it remains open to contracts that offtake the carbon for enhanced oil recovery, despite sworn testimony that the project is for underground storage. (Reuters)
EMISSIONS: Indiana regulators say they are limited in setting more stringent air pollution requirements, though former state officials say options are available to reduce pollution in areas that fail to meet air quality standards. (IPR)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: U.S. automakers are rebalancing budgets and laying off workers as they contend with shifting electric vehicle demand and higher labor costs. (Detroit News, subscription)
RENEWABLES: A new online tool allows users to see how much wind and solar power was generated on a certain date. (Des Moines Register)
BIOFUELS: Executives planning a sustainable jet fuel production plant in South Dakota say their company is undervalued and will offer an effective way for airlines to hit their emission-reduction targets. (South Dakota Searchlight)
COMMENTARY:
Climate and clean energy advocates weighing in on CenterPoint Energy’s ideas to decarbonize its natural gas business in Minnesota applaud the effort but say it falls short of what’s needed to meet the moment.
The state’s largest gas utility submitted an “innovation plan” last summer to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, which is taking public comments on the plan through March 15. Over the course of hundreds of pages, the utility proposes 18 pilot projects — from tree planting and geothermal to carbon capture and hydrogen blending.
Altogether, the utility is asking to spend more than $105 million on 18 pilot projects that it estimates will reduce the equivalent of around 330,000 metric tons of carbon emissions over the five year plan, which would represent about a 4% reduction, according to calculations by clean energy organizations.
The plan “is going to move us, but it’s not going to move as fast enough,” said Melissa Partin, climate policy analyst with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, one of several groups that have submitted comments on the plan.
The docket (M-23/215) stems from the Natural Gas Innovation Act, a 2021 state law that, among other things, authorizes gas utilities to collect money from ratepayers for projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Xcel Energy submitted a similar plan to state regulators late last year for its natural gas utility.
Gas utilities are expected to make up a growing share of the state’s climate pollution as the state’s electric utilities transition to 100% clean power by 2040. Two out of every three households heats their home with natural gas, and many industries rely on the fuel to operate medium and heavy machinery — a potentially daunting challenge as the state seeks net-zero climate emissions by 2050.
The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and other advocates have asked the Public Utilities Commission to supplement the pilot project spending with emission-reduction targets for the utilities.
While many of CenterPoint’s ideas look promising and some could eventually scale up to make a bigger impact, Partin said the Natural Gas Innovation Act will not alone drive the state across the finish line for its climate goals.
Other strategies will be needed, such as updating commercial and residential building codes, improving energy efficiency standards for appliances, and considering a ban on allowing any natural gas in new buildings, which, Partin said, “will be difficult in Minnesota’s current political climate.”
Utilities are somewhat hamstrung by the act’s requirement that half the budget for the initial plans must go to alternative fuels, which “stacks the deck” in favor of renewable natural gas and hydrogen, Partin said.
CenterPoint is already blending hydrogen into its system from a downtown Minneapolis facility, and so proposing additional such projects does not seem to fit the definition of “innovation,” Partin said. Meanwhile, a recent study by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research found little to no climate benefit from blending hydrogen in existing gas supply lines, in part because hydrogen is less energy dense and more prone to leaking.
Joe Dammel, managing director of buildings for Fresh Energy, said CenterPoint’s plan “is definitely not a silver bullet; it’s not going to get us where we need to get.”
Energy News Network is an independent journalism service of Fresh Energy.
While praising the utility for its yearlong stakeholder process and for proposing new resources and changes to its business model, the plan shows that CenterPoint will not contribute “their fair share of the emissions reductions needed based on this,” Dammel said.
CenterPoint’s pilots for weatherization and retrofitting homes look promising, he said, but ideas for purchasing carbon offsets, selling gas-powered heat pumps and injecting hydrogen into the existing gas system have little chance of success.
CenterPoint’s proposal to create green hydrogen, produced from renewable energy, and blending it into the gas distribution system is not “scalable” and has limitations. Commercial gas heat pumps “are not a very viable technology,” Dammel said. Instead, the utility should focus on applying hydrogen technology to decarbonize industrial end users.
Dammel added that to reach the state’s 2050 carbon neutrality goal CenterPoint’s first plan would have to increase its emissions reduction six-fold, from 4% to 27%.
Audrey Partridge, policy director for the Center for Energy and Environment, said the pilot programs will lead to better data and a greater understanding of the potential energy sources and their carbon emissions.
“I’ve heard people describe it as throwing spaghetti at the wall,” Partridge said. “But we need to come up with all the possible solutions and pursue them on a small scale to see which ones are going to stick. These aren’t necessarily mature ideas, as you would see in other areas of energy. They’re very, very new.”
The pilots that could yield important advances include using heat pumps for large loads and electrification of low and medium heat processes in the industrial sector, she said. Residential deep energy retrofits and geothermal technologies will likely reduce natural gas consumption.
“We do hope that CenterPoint and Xcel get approval to move forward on these plans so that we can start to learn from them,” Partridge said.
The docket could begin a new path for CenterPoint, which only sells gas. The Minneapolis Deputy Commissioner of Sustainability, Healthy Homes and Environment, Patrick Hanlon, said CenterPoint’s plan allows the utility to provide “heat as a service,” a crucial distinction that gives room for innovations the city supports, including ground source networked geothermal systems, district energy and other approaches.
“Heat as a service allows CenterPoint to move away from natural gas and move towards some alternative, more climate-friendly sources of heat,” Hanlon said. The city also wants to ensure that residents are “not burdened” with the cost of the innovative pilots or switching to a different level of service, he said.
The attorney general’s office, which represents ratepayers, suggested the cost for some pilots outweighed the carbon benefits while suggesting the commission modify or deny sections of the plan.
“Portions of CenterPoint’s plan are not yet ready for primetime: several of the proposals lack necessary partners, and many lack sufficient detail to establish their prudence,” the office wrote. “Other proposed projects are unlikely to achieve the greenhouse gas savings CenterPoint suggests and unlikely to justify the astronomical cost to ratepayers.”
The attorney general and clean energy groups also raised concerns about CenterPoint’s request to exceed pilot budgets by as much as 25% without statutory approval. Clean energy groups also seek modifications to CenterPoint’s plan to recover the cost of projects.
The Public Utilities Commission is expected to hold hearings later this year before deciding on the plans for both utilities.
NUCLEAR: Connecticut legislators mull studying the possibility of adding new nuclear capacity at the Millstone Station plant. (New Haven Register)
BUILDINGS: Providence’s city council passes a new ordinance requiring municipal buildings reach carbon neutrality by 2040. (Providence Journal)
SOLAR:
CLEAN POWER: New York City finds it feasible to develop solar and battery storage at Rikers Island, an infamous prison slated for closure, as well as install offshore wind power transmission equipment. (The City)
POLICY: A hearing on New York’s new emissions reduction scoping plan sees supporters and detractors argue for and against accelerated climate action. (Auburn Citizen)
TRANSIT: Some Maryland lawmakers want to block the possibility of funding a high-speed train between New York City and Washington, D.C., although the legislation is stalled in committee. (Capital News Service)
FOSSIL FUELS:
GRID: Connecticut legislators hear testimony on a proposal to study the impact of large data centers on the state’s power grid, but supporters of such facilities say studies will just delay development. (CT Mirror)
GEOTHERMAL:
UTILITIES: Iberdrola, a Spanish energy major with a majority stake in Avangrid, wants to buy out the remaining shares in the Connecticut-based utility. (Hartford Business Journal)
GRID: Conservation groups file a new lawsuit seeking to halt construction on a nearly completed $650 million transmission line that would cross a national wildlife refuge across the Mississippi River. (WPR)
ALSO:
TRANSPORTATION: The founder of an electric bike-sharing company is determined to make the operation successful in Youngstown, Ohio, by scaling appropriately and focusing on community needs. (Energy News Network)
PIPELINES:
CLEAN ENERGY:
SOLAR: A Detroit neighborhood is removed from consideration for a series of city-backed solar projects amid local opposition. (Planet Detroit)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: EV startup Rivian pauses construction on a $5 billion manufacturing plant in Georgia to instead produce a new model at an existing plant in Illinois. (Associated Press)
COAL: Republican lawmakers in four Midwest states are part of a movement to pass legislation that props up retiring coal plants, even though ratepayers may foot the bill as coal fails to compete on price with clean energy. (E&E News)
EFFICIENCY: Seven years after buying a dilapidated Detroit duplex for $1,700, a homeowner completes a $275,000 renovation into a net-zero home for low-income renters. (Planet Detroit)
COMMENTARY: Michigan State University researchers say Detroit residents are more likely to support solar projects in the city if they can benefit financially. (The Conversation)
CLIMATE: President Biden highlights his climate policies in his State of the Union address, tying Inflation Reduction Act incentives to a wave of clean energy manufacturing projects and jobs. (E&E News)
ALSO: Two new analyses conclude this winter’s record-breaking warmth was driven by climate change, which combined with an El Niño weather pattern made the season unrecognizable in parts of the world. (New York Times)
OIL & GAS:
GRID: Advocates say grid-enhancing technologies can help squeeze more capacity out of existing U.S. transmission lines and reduce bottlenecks as more clean energy comes online. (States Newsroom)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
UTILITIES: Xcel Energy acknowledges its power poles likely sparked the largest wildfire in Texas history, though denies it was negligent in maintaining its facilities. (Texas Tribune)
SOLAR: New York City finds it feasible to develop solar and battery storage at Rikers Island, an infamous prison slated for closure, as well as install offshore wind power transmission equipment. (The City)
STORAGE: Advocates say Hawaiian Electric’s plan to slash residential battery program incentives could imperil the state’s energy transition and lead to more power outages. (Grist)
TRANSPORTATION: The founder of an electric bike-sharing company is determined to make the operation successful in Youngstown, Ohio, by scaling appropriately and focusing on community needs. (Energy News Network)
BIOFUELS: Advocates say a California program allowing dairies to sell carbon credits for producing biofuels from manure incentivizes factory farming and its environmental impacts. (Sierra)
COMMENTARY: A California columnist considers the pros and cons of public power agencies after Warren Buffett questions the financial viability of investor-owned utilities in the West. (Los Angeles Times)
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: The dwindling population of a historic Alabama community founded by former enslaved people fights the two-mile expansion of a rail line in a neighborhood already besieged by industrial pollution. (Next City/Reckon)
COAL: Kentucky lawmakers advance a bill to form a commission charged with assessing energy generation and demand, likely adding yet another obstacle for utilities who want to retire aging and inefficient coal-fired power plants. (Associated Press)
WIND: Dominion Energy will pay a Virginia city and historic lighthouse nearly $1 million to compensate for affecting their ocean views as it builds a sizable offshore wind farm. (Virginian-Pilot)
NUCLEAR: Virginia lawmakers consider two proposals to let utilities charge ratepayers to develop advanced nuclear reactors, with the bills applying separately to Appalachian Power and Dominion Energy, along with some other differences. (Virginia Mercury)
SOLAR: A Texas-based automotive supplier will source power from a 2.6 MW solar array on neighboring land in one of the state’s first three-party energy purchase agreements. (KABB)
CLIMATE:
OIL & GAS: Mexico stands to become a major player in the global market for liquified natural gas, but the Biden administration’s pause on permitting LNG export facilities in the U.S. has delayed that prospect and given climate activists more time to fight back. (Inside Climate News)
PIPELINES: A Canadian pipeline operator announces it will spend $500 million to expand its network and storage facilities along the Gulf Coast after raising its projected profits from purchasing three gas utilities from Dominion Energy. (Reuters)
EFFICIENCY:
EMISSIONS:
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